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When Life is Like A Meme

When you go on Tumblr or Facebook how many posts do you see with gifs commented on? Probably more often then not. Gifs are the new way for the internet generation to communicate with each other. “MRW”: remix Culture and the Reaction Gif, looks into this in more depth and in doing so creates a narrative behind the gif. It is not longer just the moving picture, but a way to communicate more effectively on the internet, with people we may not even know. The gif allows people to put a picture to describe their feelings, rather then explaining, much like how facial expressions can tell more then someone just explaining how they would look.

This connects to the something greater, a larger cultural context. Now people can react with something that not only describes their mood but is also from something within popular culture, such as a gif from a popular TV show (Parks and Rec or example). This creates a double connection between the people; they are not only bonding over the reaction gif itself they are also able to bond over the source of the gif. This creates the ability to create bonds with people they’ve never met purely based upon a gif.

There is also the culture that is created because of the explosion of the use of gifs. This can be continued to be studied, to see how gifs are effecting the internet generation on a larger scale and how they are effecting the internet beyond social media platforms.